Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #29 of 2013 looks like a decent $178 million for the top 12 films, about even with the average for this weekend over the past several years (but down significantly from last year’s same weekend which was dominated by the opening of The Dark Knight Rises).   Opening at 2,903 […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. Warner Brothers has moved past Universal to take the #2 spot on the worldwide box office chart for 2013.  The opening of We’re the Millers and continued overseas strength from Pacific Rim and to a lesser extent The Conjuring powered Warner Brothers to the best week of the studios. Reminder: the chart below has been reformatted and expanded […]

  OPENINGS:  ONE DIRECTION: THIS IS US (TriStar/Sony) continued its frontloaded box office swoon, with a 28% Sunday drop and probably another 25% today (the Monday number will likely be 75% below what the movie earned on opening day).  Despite more than doubling the Friday box office of The Butler, it will end up losing […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #40 of 2013 looks like a decent $115 million for the top 12 films, down 13% from last year’s atypical weekend but up 17% from the average for the same weekend the past few years.  One movie is driving the entire weekend: Gravity and its new record for […]

  OPENINGS:  Stop me if you’ve heard this before:  an expensive action-adventure will need to overperform internationally in order to get past its red ink.  With Thor 2 opening in just a week, ENDER’S GAME (Summit/Lionsgate) had a very narrow window to make an impression, and its $9.9M Friday, probably meaning a weekend in the […]

  The holiday box office “weekend” doesn’t officially start until today (several of the new openings began screening on Tuesday night, but their studios aren’t publicizing the results), and Mitch Metcalf’s weekend predictions are here.  Even in this pre-holiday period, though, THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate) is piling on impressive numbers. After the normal heavy post-weekend […]

  The box office effect of the upcoming holidays is already being seen, as studios are estimating extremely low Sunday drops from Saturday based on seasonal patterns.  With one conspicuous exception, everything in town is doing at least moderately well. OPENINGS:  ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (Paramount) didn’t carry off the weekend crown, and at […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #2 of 2014 looks like $121 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 12% from the average for the same weekend the past few years (but better than we forecast earlier this week). Opening at 2,876 theaters Friday, Lone Survivor from Universal grossed $14.4 million Friday, putting the Peter Berg-directed Afghanistan War […]